


Ceteris Paribus

by LillithBlack



Series: Space Exy [1]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Freeform, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abortion, Space exy, well there none in this but there can be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-12-12 23:45:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11747646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LillithBlack/pseuds/LillithBlack
Summary: Ceteris Paribus. All other things being equal.Tilda trades freedom for the life inside her.





	Ceteris Paribus

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea whats going on but this is a thing I wrote. Space Exy is a thing okay. 
> 
> Space morals are not Earth morals. Space rules about who gets to live are not earth rules about who has the right to life. 
> 
> Un-betaed- because I literally wrote it an hour ago so apologies.

 

Tilda hadn’t been pregnant very long, when their colony was visited by the physician. Every single woman and man was tested and released back to their work.

 

When Tilda was called back into the treatment room the day after her test, she figured it was because she hadn’t logged her pregnancy with the controllers yet. 

 

Instead the physician told her he was a researcher. That he could offer her freedom, a way off this planet in exchange for her fetus. That out of four whole colony planets, that he had tested, only Tilda had DNA that would make a viable effect on his research.

 

She took the offer. She had been stuck on Epsilon 5 since she was a little girl sold into labour, of course she took it. They were just going to take her baby and put another slave collar on it anyway, what difference did it make who took it as long as she got out of this hell hole.

 

The physician came back in her third division, took off her collar and took her with him. In his laboratory, on a space station she didn’t know the name of, just as he was about to begin the extraction he pause and said, “Hmm….”

 

“What? What is it?” Tilda felt sweat roll down her neck, terror that he didn’t want her anymore, that he would leave her back in the stinking mess, that her transgression would demote her to the mines, flashed through her head.

 

“There are two. You are gestating identical twins.”

 

“I am?” She put a hand to her stomach in confused awe.

 

“Not that it matters.” he shook his head and started again holding up strange silver instruments.

 

“Wait- I- the deal was only for one!” Tilda found herself saying, suddenly freedom was so close and yet she couldn’t just leave her everything here.

 

The scientist paused and looked at her warily, she expected a swift rebuke and the sweet smell of the anesthetic.

 

Instead he shrugged and said, “You’re right, the deal was for just one fetus, besides this will give me such a wonderful control to measure against.”

 

Tilda didn't understand and a second later the drugs kicked in.

 

“Close your eyes you won’t feel a thing.”

 

\-----

 

He left her on a  dirty space station and barely enough credits to make a call to the inner fringes. Luther was surprised to see her on the holo after so many standards, his face lined with age his jaw set further in that stubborn way she remembered. But he promised to get her even if it would take him half a standard to reach her.

 

The space station didn’t have a name, it was just a number and there was hardly enough work for her to feed herself. She tried selling her self but after a while no one wanted a pregnant woman. Everyone was poor and spacers didn’t dock there very often. It was just a way station between bigger systems, just enough for some ships to refuel.

 

Aaron Min’ard was born a division before Luther was supposed to arrive. He cried incessantly and she hated herself for refusing to give him to the scientist as well. Except sometime when it was cold, in her bunk at the rundown hostel she was staying at, she could curl up with him and holding him made the night pass faster. His baby gurgles and laughter sometimes made her smile and think she was never going to let herself get tossed into a cesspool like Epsilon 5 again.

 

\----

 

Systems away on an abandoned planet there was an explosion. The laboratory outpost collapsed in on itself.

 

The first ship that docked to investigate the explosion was a pirate trader from the outer fringes. They looted the places including all the embryos in stasis gestators, the laboratory boasted an incredible array of hybrids in stasis. They left anything human looking for the rightful authorities to deal with. Hybrids fetched the highest prices on the black market whether as bodyguards or for someone's exotic collection. It wasn't like most hybrids survived for long after birth, their genetic makeup simply wasn’t viable with life.

 

When the Federation Patrol Ship arrived they only found a few live gestators, with what they presumed were human embryos. Instead of calling in their science team they just took a look at the fetuses and separated them into human and hybrid. As per Galactic Guidelines, under the Freedom of Life Act, the human fetuses were all brought to full term and gestated. The ten or so children were tagged and sent to the nearest systems orphanage, some even adopted by willing families.

 

The remaining hybrid embryos were terminated.

 

\----

 

Andrew Doe was on Calnak at his third orphanage, the first time he went berserk. His pointed ears and sharp canine teeth had always been a sign of his not quite human DNA but they had always been something that attracted the wrong kind of attention.

 

There had been a group of boys harassing him and taunting him with knives one minute and the next he was waking up with blood in his mouth. The boys were on the ground each one with their throats ripped out, eyes unseeing, mouths open in silent screams.

 

He had always been a fighter, good with his fists but never anything like this.

  
Andrew ran, he burned his clothes and scrubbed himself clean and didn’t leave the orphanage till the day Cassiopeia came for him.

 

He didn’t rage out again till Drake, but Drake was a fighter who knew how to subdue someone like Andrew. He had drugs and he had means of bleeding the fight right out of him. He knew a lot about what Andrew was. Drake traced back Andrew’s birth to the exploded laboratory on the outer fringes and theorised his existence.

 

It was pure luck that took Cassiopeia and her family to the inner fringe planets for work, Drake could visit more often she reasoned. But the closer you got to the main systems the more strict their census became. Drake did something that stopped the system from recognising Andrew’s hybrid genes as he called them but it didn't stop his details and imprint being sent out to central database crystals. This meant that his results pinged the infonet Nicholas Hemmick had left out at the request of his cousin.

 

One data burst and suddenly Andrew had a brother he never knew existed, trying to contact him. He had Luther Hemmick ready to preach salvation down his throat and a mother who must have clearly sold him to the highest bidder. Cassiopeia left it up to him to decide.

 

For the longest time Andrew rejected the calls and tried to only focus on the light in Cassiopeia's eyes. He ignored the way his hands would shake and how the claw marks carved into his arms took longer and longer to disappear every time.

 

And then Luther contacted Drake, appealing to him to convince Andrew to meet the mother and brother who had tossed him away.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [tumblr](http://buckywithegoodhair.tumblr.com/). Idk if I will continue anyone want to know more about this verse???


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